Bill proposes for all Chinese high schoolers to receive military training

https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Defense/China-s-next-defense-buildup-mandatory-military-training-for-students2

by OgsyedIE • 2 years ago

35 32 2 years ago

asia.nikkei.com

I’m sure this has no meaning given other similar changes taking place in China, and does not need to be viewed in a wider context of militarization, because it will have no impact on the unfolding of our collective futures.

more_corn• 2 years ago

It’s ok to say it out loud. China is preparing for war.

mc32• 2 years ago

Wasn’t it more like they got soft after Mao even Deng?

They used to have hotwars with Vietnam, skirmishes with Russia and India. They’d send brigades to the countryside to engage in community driven building of whatever, backyard smelters, canal digging, earthworks, etc. they’d let up a few decades, but people are getting too bourgeois for their own good and need some taste of country proletariat.

derelicta• 2 years ago

Sad to say but I understand them. They don't want to end up like the young Yugoslavian Republic, weak and shattered for ever because of US "interventionism"

fred_is_fred• 2 years ago

I am curious how this will play out. How does starting a war with your largest economic market help you in the long run? If the US and Europe stop buying from China it will end their economy. Do they have enough customers in Russia, India, unaligned countries?

makeitdouble• 2 years ago

To note, military training also gives the government more control over the younger generation, albeit at a cost (which can also be beneficial to the army, in term of budget increase, and count as GDP as money flows around).

Aside from actually going to war, there can be many benefits for a government like China.

mensetmanusman• 2 years ago

They also recently completed the largest field hospitals and military/civilian bunkers across from the strait.

tomcam• 2 years ago

It's an employment program. Unemployment is massive and reported. In the less populated provinces it's devastating. They are trying desperately to avoid a revolution.

delfinom• 2 years ago

I feel like teaching the peasants how to fight only greases the revolution wheels if they aren't actually doing anything to fix the other problems.

nequo2• 2 years ago

Every male adult had to serve 2 years in the military in the Eastern Bloc. Yet those regimes were pretty stable.

euroderf• 2 years ago

Keep those male 20-somethings occupied.

evanjrowley• 2 years ago

If that is the goal, then this course of action may be counterproductive. Military service may increase the sense of entitlement among youths, who will still face unemployment after the training is over.

Aeolun3• 2 years ago

I think it’s mildly disturbing when a country feels the need to mind control it’s citizens enough that they start military education from elementary school.

I don’t really know if I’ve heard of that happening anywhere else.

DontchaKnowit2• 2 years ago

Well, germany infamously did this with the Hitler youth.

Aeolun3• 2 years ago

I deliberately left that reference out. It was the one that came to mind though. It’s always the facist states that do it (fair, that’s kinda the whole fascist schtick, but still)

moi2388• 2 years ago

Nazi Germany, USSR, Iran, North Korea, Russia, just to name a couple

Ekaros• 2 years ago

Or does something like regular pledge to a symbol, be it a flag or religious one... Feels like fascism to me...

Aeolun3• 2 years ago

Yeah, I completely agree. That’s kinda disturbing too, but to a much lesser degree.

There’s a qualitative difference between “be proud of your country” and “we will now prepare to vanquish the enemies of the motherland”

aragonite• 2 years ago

2-3 weeks of military training for beginning (middle- and) high-schoolers has been tradition for over 100 years since the founding of ROC.[1] PRC simply inherited the same tradition which also exists in Taiwan.[2][3]

[1] https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%99%AE%E9%80%9A%E9%AB%98%E7...

[2] https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%99%AE%E9%80%9A%E9%AB%98%E7...

[3] https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%BB%8D%E8%A8%93_(%E4%B8%AD%...

flappyeagle• 2 years ago

America should as well. Mandatory military service means it’s not just the poor and those without other choices that serve.

ahazred8ta2• 2 years ago

At one point in the 1920s the US was planning to put everybody through a short boot camp at age 18 and then release them to be Reservists.

methou• 2 years ago

So they finally started to legalize what’s in practice since the 90s. These were norms for middle schools, high schools, and universities years after what happened in the Tiananmen Square.

_lvbh• 2 years ago

Not sure why this comment is all the way down here. I lived in China for ~3 years and they had military training bi-weekly in the school next to where I lived. Watching their marches and coordination scared me. Looked robotic and unnatural.

Bill proposes for all Chinese high schoolers to receive military training

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